Hi John, Le 11-mars-06, à 23:40, John M a écrit :
> [Reductionist thinking is the way the human mind CAN > function at our present level. I disagree. No serious scientific paper can be reductionnist. Many media and scientist themselves (the week-end in the lucky case) defend reductionist interpretation of their papers, but I dismiss those reductions as bad (wrong) theology. Those are mainly collection of unsupported conclusions. > To select portions of > the wholeness as our 'topics' and regard them > separately. Where I turn negative about it is the > habit of science (and other human thinking as well) to > draw universal conclusions from details learned within > such models - extending it to the domains BEYOND such > model. We agree, they are wrong. > That is eg. how geocentric 'findings' were extended > into the stellar movements in Ptolemistic views, or > bio-physiologic 'findings' are substituted for mental > events and their ORIGINATION. Or the physicalization > of nonphysical sciences. Etc. > I find reductionist exploration/science successful in > learning about the 'world' for constructing > technology. Only serendipitously. Even in engineering "reductionism" is wrong and leads to errors and money waste. > Theoretically, however, I like to 'TRY' to consider > the "wholeness" (which I do not identify as TOE or > Hal's everything. OK. > I simply cannot identify it as of > today, which does not induce me to accept an > identification I disagree with. Like: omnipotens > math.] You don't know how much I agree with you. Thanks to Godel we know now there is no omnipotent math. Please don't confuse the idea that the absolute reality could me mathematical (and that the physical would be secondary), with the reductionist belief that such or such mathematical theory or philosophy has the last word on reality. Don't confuse the mathematical realm with the mathematical theories. All theories are hypotheses based on world-views, and no interesting theories can "prove" any of their interpretations. With all my frankness that our friendship allows, I feel sometimes like if you were defending some reductionnist conception of the numbers, of what the numbers could be :-) Best, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
